JEAN MARCHANT, the wood-carver.
DORETTE, his wife.
LOUIS DE LOTBINIERE.
SHAGONAS, an Indian lad.
The scene is a log-built room. There is a door; and a narrow window, both open. Outside can be seen fields of ripe corn, a palisade, and the corner of a loopholed block-house; beyond is the forest; all is silent and deserted in the sun.
The walls of the room are hung with skins, and here and there with things Jean has carved,masks, two crucifixes, pipes, a panel showing a faun dancing to the piping of an Indian girl; there are guns also, rods and nets, a long French spade, and a shelf with a few books.
The bare floor is strewn with fine wood-shavings. Jean is carving a Pieta for the new church, in high relief on panels of red cedar wood. Opposite him, facing the door, is Dorette, in a rough chair covered with a fur rug; she is sitting to him for the face of the Madonna. In the doorway sits Shagonas, mending a snare.
The Wood Carver's Wife
Jean. (singing) Hard in the frost and the snow,
The cedar must have known
In his red, deep-fibred heart,
A hundred winters ago,
I should love and carve you so.
And the knowledge must have beat
From his root to his height like the mid-March heat
When the wild geese cry from the cloud and the sleet,
And the black-birch buds are grown.
Then, were you then a part
Of the vast slow life of the tree?
Did you rise with the sap of his spring?
Did you stoop like a star to his boughs?
Did you nest in his soul and sing,
A silver thrush in a shadowy house,
As now, beloved, to me?
Dorette. Not I. I have not sung.
Jean. The sight of you
Sings to the eyes. A little lower down,
Lean but a little lower that fair head,
The head of Mary o'er her murdered Christ,
The head I kiss in darkness all night long,
Lord! and the delicate hollow of the cheek
Defeats the tool. There's no blade fine enough,
Unless a strand of cobweb steeled in frost,
Or Time's own graver.
Dorette. Hush. I'll not grow old.
Jean. Grow old? I shall grow old along with you.
Dorette. Together? No, old age is solitary.
A little stretching out of hands, a little
Breathing on ashes, and even regret is gone.
I tell you, I have seen old people here
As not in Picardy. The milk-dry woman
Crouching above her death-fire in the snow,
The old man biting on a salted skin,
Their patience and the forestO, I fear
Age more than anything.
Jean. You are yet too young,
Beloved, for my Mary.
Dorette. What do I lack?
Jean. Why, the cold barren look on nothingness,
The grief that cannot weep, for if it could
It would be less grief. The inconsolable
Dumb apprehension, the doubt that asks for ever
"Is it so?" of Love and hears the answer "Yea,"
For ever. . .
I would grieve you if I could
To make my Mary perfect.
Dorette. You are hard.
You love your cold woods more than loveliness
Of look and touch.
Jean. Why, only as Lord God
Might love the delicate dust He made you from,
You and great trees, rivers and clouds, the plain
Of ripened grasses running into flowers,
And all that breathes in the world.
There, you have moved!
Dorette. I only moved a little way to look.
You have carved Our Lady's hair in Indian braids.
Jean. Why not?
Dorette. And laid the Lord on cedar boughs,
Wrapping His body in a beaded skin.
Jean. Why not? He would have walked in our New France
Greatly as there, and died for these as well.
Dorette. He is half-Indian. The Intendant will not like it.
Jean. The Intendant will not see in the dark church.
Old Father Peter has a new lace cope,
And even his dark-skinned servers will go fine.
Dorette. Ah, the dark people! How I fear them too.
Shagonas. The lady should not fear. Their hearts are open
Even as Shagonas' heart. Shagonas knows
Only the ways of stream and wood a little,
And whence to bring the lady snake-root, whence
White waterlilies, whence sweet sassafras,
And berries in the moon of Falling Leaves.
Dorette. Not you, Shagonas. I've no fear of you.
Shagonas. The young dog-foxes running in the fern,
The bittern and the arrow-dropping kite,
The tall deer with five summers on his head,
These were Shagonas' brothers. Now he comes
With broidered nut-bags and a little snare
To catch a musk-rat for the lady's sake.
Is it well made?
Jean. Well made and strong, Shagonas,
You sleek wolf apt to catch the herd-dog's bark.
The musk-rat ate our pansies out of France
And vexed the lady.
Shagonas. She must not be vexed.
Shagonas dreamed the lady had two shadows.
If but the following darkness touches her,
Or strikes at her, Shagonas will strike too.
So!
Dorette. O, the knife, the knife!
Jean. Put up, Shagonas.
We love it not, the steel in a red hand,
Who have seen too much. But what did the boy mean?
Beloved, how you cried!
Dorette. It was the sunlight
On the bare blade. I did not guess he wore it.
Jean. They always have a claw beneath the pelt.
I know them well.
Dorette. When do you go to see
The place preparing for your altar-piece?
Jean. Why, any hour. But I can't leave her yet.
Look, how the long hand grows from grain to flesh!
Did not the bosom lift? Here at her throat's
The beating of a vein. O, if she came
From her imprisoning dead cedar wood,
'Gemma decens, rosa recens,
Castitatis lilium,'
You, or the Mother of God? I do not know.
I should have two breathing lilies in my room,
Two queens, two heavenly roses,
O, donum Dei! And yet . . . the face, the face!
Beautiful. But there's no despair in her.
That makes despair in me. Look you my girl,
Suffer it with her. Think. She only knows
The dead weight of the Saviour on her knees
As it were a little child's. She's woman. There
Is her dead heaven, her babe, her God, her all,
Unrisen. The grave yet holds Him.
Why, you weep.
Dorette. I am tired and cold.
Jean. Well, . . Rest you, little heart.
I would not have you greater. Dry your tears.
She has dried hers long ago.
Dorette. I have sat too long.
Will you go now to the church?
Jean. Yes, yes, and see
The shrine prepared to put my Lady in.
You or the Virgin Mother? You, I think.
They'll see you there between the candle flames
A hundred years. The lads will worship you
And maids with innocent eyes will wonder at you.
Your beauty will lift many souls to God.
Come, boy.
Shagonas. The lady must not be afraid
Of any shadow.
Jean. Fare you well, my rose.
Jean kisses her, takes his sword and broad hat, and goes out, followed by Shagonas. Dorette watches them through the open door as they cross the cornfields towards the blockhouse. When they are out of sight she shuts the door, crosses the room, and kneels before the Pieta, her face hidden in her hands.
Dorette. If you have lain in the night
And felt the old tears run
In their channels worn on the heart,
Pity me, Mary.
If you have dreaded the light
And turned from the warmth of the sun
Like a blind child groping apart,
Pity me, Mary.
If you have risen from sleep
To the shadow of death, and the moon
White as one slain for your sake,
Pity me, Mary.
If you have longed for the deep
Close dark in the fulness of noon
When the eyes of the forest awake,
Pity me, Mary.
O, you who went folded in wings
Of Godhead, the maiden of God,
First star of the morning He made,
Pity me, Mary.
No bird of the meadow that sings,
No bud that shines up from the sod
But pierces me too with its blade.
Pity me, Mary.
Ah Christ! but will she pity, being pure?
You also, yet you pitied. Have compassion.
You stilled the wild seas at Gennesaret.
Stretch out Your hand and still me. I am torn
With tempest, and the deep goes over me.
He does not stir. He is dead. O, Louis, Louis!
There is a soft knocking at the door, but she does not hear. She remains motionless before the Virgin. The door opens, De Lotbiniere enters and shuts it behind him. Seeing her, he uncovers, steals across the room and kneels beside her. Presently she lifts her head and looks him in the face.
Dorette. Louis!
De L. O loveliest, join me to your prayer.
Dorette. Louis!
De L. I too will kneel to Christ and weep
That anything so beautiful as love
Should have such sorrow on it.
Dorette. O my dear,
I think I knew. But you are mad to come here,
Here in broad day.
De L. I am growing tired of darkness,
Dark hours, dark deeds, and little darkling ways,
A dirty smoke across the flame of love.
I had rather meet your Jeannot face to face
With sunshine and clean air.
Clean hands, clean heart,
They would be his. He's welcome.
Does he know?
Dorette. You have not kissed me yet.
De L. Come to my heart.
Now answer me.
Dorette. The boy Shagonas knows,
Not yet my husband.
De L. I almost wish he knew. . .
Dorette. O, Louis, Louis, if you're in haste for that,
Content you. He will learn it very soon.
The sharp-tongued grasses that I trod towards you
Will whisper him, the winds will tell him, Here,
The dews will lie at noontime to betray me,
The dawn come out of hour, the dark boughs sigh,
There, there the foul thing passed.
De L. O, my Dorette!
Dorette. That's right. I'll stand and let you kneel to me.
Will you kneel gladly?
De L. As I would to her,
God's Mother, looking earthward with your face.
Dorette. There's not a chisel-stroke he used to brand
My likeness there, but casts me farther out
From God's forgiveness.
De L. Alas, my pretty dove.
You make me hate myself, my love, my choice
That so hath caged you, for you flew so cheerly
Between the kind leaves and the little clouds.
Gold were your feathers and your wings of silver,
And now you feel the mire.
Dorette. Nay, you have loosed me
A flight above the stars. God pity us.
We were not made for sin. I love you, Louis.
De L. Why, so I came to hear.
Dorette. You are in haste?
De L. So bound to my great cousin the Intendant
I may not breathe without his lordship's leave
Nor tie my shoe without a grant for it.
That's right, you smile. You look less angel so,
But match me better. I have so much time
As the old priest here uses for a pater,
No more, no less.
Dorette. But that's enough for love.
De L. Why, love's timed by the heart beat or the slow
Century's half. I have no thought but you,
No care, no pride, no hope, no anything.
I am not myself but you. My very flesh
Has taken your tender likeness on. I see,
Speak, breathe, hear, hunger but as you, Dorette.
Smile on your servant.
Dorette. I smiled upon you once,
Out in the forest when you talked to me.
It seemed no sin among the idle leaves.
But here the very windows are sealed up
With watchfulness, the doorsill seems aware
Who lately crossed it. Louis, I cannot smile.
I fear for you, beloved. Will you go?
De L. What, go so soon? I have scarcely looked at you,
Nor touched your hair, nor lifted your sweet hands.
My chalice has gone drained of you its wine
These three days. Love, I cannot leave you yet.
Dorette. But if he comes. . . .
De L. When will you to the forest,
My dear wild dove? I saw red lilies there
Burning in sun-bleached grass, and gentians spread
Beside a little pool, less blue than he,
The great kingfisher poised on the dead bough.
Black squirrels chirred against the quarrelling jays,
There came a flight of emerald hummingbirds,
While through the wind-swayed walls of reed and vine
Laced the quick dragonflies. Sweet, will you come?
Dorette. I am yours, my heart, wherever I may be.
Let it content you.
De L. I am not content.
She leaves him, goes to the Pieta, and standing before it, speaks.
Dorette. O Mother, tell him I cannot go.
De L. Dorette.
Dorette. O Mother, hold me fast against his voice.
De L. Dorette.
Dorette. O Mother, hide me from his eyes.
Build from your sorrowing hands a little ark
Where that storm-driven bird, my soul, may rest
Till all its heaviness is overpast.
Where will that be? In the grave? I think not there.
Though my slight bones had lain for centuries
Bound over with the prisoning forest roots,
And had no other feasting than the rain,
And known no other music than the wind,
I should yet go climbing upward every spring,
When the whitethroat came and burgeoning grains put out
To look for him. . .
See, Louis, she will not hear me.
She is not Our Lady, for she has my face . . .
What was that noise?
De L. I heard none.
Dorette. It was like
The sound of a stretched bow this side the river.
Beyond the fields. It had a sound of death.
De L. Loveliest, what frights you? Life is all for us.
The fulness and fruition of the year
Are on our side, deep rose and darkening grape
Are with us, and the strong bird fledged to fly
Forgetful of the nest.
In those deep woods
I found white flowers beside a little stream
With three waxed petals round a core of gold.
I would have brought them to you, but I thought
To crown you with them there, where balsam boughs
Strain the sweet sun, and every hour is stayed
On silence, and but the stream runs into song.
Dorette. If you owe me any favour, any grace,
Of a promise I once kept, I pray you go.
De L. Are you tired of loving me?
Dorette. I tired? O Christ!
I would lay my body for your feet to walk on,
And make a carpet of my hair for you,
Be the unsensed wood, the stone, the dust you trod,
So that you trod safety.
De L. Dear, I'll go,
But kiss me first.
Dorette. O Louis, I will seal you
With a charm of sevenfold kisses against wrong,
Here, here, and here, on hands, cheeks, lips, and head.
When first I saw you, back in Amiens,
Go riding with the great folk past our door,
I thought that head a king's.
De L. Sweet, losing you
I should go unkinged for ever, since my kingdom
Rests but in this.
Dorette. You need not fear to lose me,
Save as the strong tree loses the dead leaf
Or the full tide one star. Though I should die
Soon, and be set behind you like a song
Heard once between the midnight and the dawn,
And then forgotten, yet all I was, looked, said,
Should still be yours, warm night be full of me,
And morning come for ever with my face,
Who have given you your first love.
De L. First love, and last.
Dorette. And last. . . and last. . . . Go now.
O Christ, too late.
De L. Too late?
Dorette. They are coming upward from the river,
Jean and his Indian boy.
De L. So soon returned?
Dorette. He is walking very fast. I think he knows.
De L. Does he, at last?
Dorette. Perhaps Shagonas told him,
Perhaps the dumb earth lightened into speech,
As often times to flowers, or the blank air
Took colour in our likeness. . . Why, you wait!
O, I am going mad. Have you no limbs,
No breath, no natural motion? Would you bide
Thus, thus the loosening rock, the falling tree,
Fingering a sword?
De L. Is your Jean not so much?
Let him find me here beside you.
Dorette. If he does
I shall go mad indeed. Have I no claim?
Have you no pity for me? Is your love
Of such a bitter substance that my tears
Can wring no answer from it, nor my hands
Avail against your pride? See, see I'll kneel,
Nay, stretch my length before you, in the dust
Darken the hair you praise, with very death
Entreat, beseech you, only that you go.
De L. There, lest my heart break. There, poor child, I'll go!
Dorette. Now? Now?
De L. Now, now. Why, you will make me laugh
At these so tender terrors. I will slip
Into the berried elder-brake that throws
Shade on your sill, and wait till he's within,
And the door shut.
Dorette. Go, go.
De Lotbiniere slips from the door which he leaves open and hides in the thicket which has thrown leaf shadows upon it through the afternoon. Dorette again kneels before the Pieta.
Dorette. Keep open door,
O Saviour, of your mercy. Blot him out
In soft leaf-shadows like a little death.
Shut thou his eyes with webs, his breath with buds,
Prison his hands with branches. Strew Thou me
Dust on the wind to blind them so they see not,
Nor hear . . . . . . Ah!
Jean is heard singing as he approaches the house.
Jean. (singing) Three kings rode to Bethlehem
By the sand and the foam.
Three kings rode to Bethlehem.
Only two rode home.
O, he hath stayed to watch her face
And make his prayer thereto,
And to lay down for his soul's grace
The straw beneath her shoe.
O, he hath sold the golden rings
That linked his camel-reins,
And the low song a mother sings
Is all his sorrow gains.
Two rode home by the foam and the sand,
Between the night and the day,
But one has stayed in Holy Land
And cast his crown away.
As his song ends, Jean reaches the door and stands within it, gazing at Dorette, who remains before the Pieta. Presently he enters the room, his gaze still upon her.
Jean. Do you pray there to yourself?
Dorette. Rather to God.
Jean. Why, that's a better prayer.
You should not pray to yourself. You are too tender,
You irised bubble of the clay, to bear
The weight of worship. Prayer must not be made
To the weak dust the wind cards presently
About the world. Why, even your shadow, she,
Madonna of the reddening cedar wood,
Hath but a troubled momentary power,
A doubtful consolation, and a look
As though the wind would rend her and the fire
Eat to swift ash. No comfort there for sinners.
But you're no sinner, need no comforting
Other than mine,as this, and this, and this.
Dorette. You hurt me.
Jean. I? What, hurt you with a kiss?
Shall I go kiss her so?
Dorette. It were a sin.
Jean. Here is too much of sin and sin and sin.
Go, get you to that chair.
Dorette. Why do you look
So strangely on me?
Jean. Is my look so strange?
Dorette. Yea, sure, as if you found me dead but now
And saw my face.
Jean. I see a kind of death there.
Go, sit you in your chair.
Dorette. Where is Shagonas?
Jean. Lingering to shoot at crows with his great bow
More fit for war. He has fledged an arrow thrice
In carrion hearts, until the feather dripped
Blood, blood, and blood again. You shrink? By blood
Was the world saved, and what's as red as it
Only by blood is turned wool-white again.
What's that to you, white rose? Go, sit you there.
I would make you more Madonna.
Dorette. Jean, not now.
I am sick. I am weary.
Jean. Do you pray to me?
You should not. You're Our Lady. You will taste
The year-long incense and the holy heat
Of candles. They will hail you mystic rose,
The tower of ivory, the golden house,
Sea-star and vase of honour. Sit you there.
Dorette. I cannot.
Jean. Go.
Dorette. You are very harsh with me.
Jean. 'Tis you are hard to please. I kiss; you tremble,
I speak; you are in tears.
Dorette. Where is Shagonas?
Jean. Without, without.
Dorette. I have an errand for him.
Jean. He will come soon . . . Fie, what a withered look,
How your heart beats. You are fevered. Sit, Dorette.
Lift your face to the light,a little forward,
So, now,and dream you hold across your knees
What's dearest of your world, and slain for you
That blood may wash out sin.
Dorette. O, Christ!
Jean. Of course.
Who else but Christ? That suits me. Hold your peace.
While they are speaking, Dorette has seated herself again in the chair facing towards the door, upon which the lightly-stirred shadows of elder leaves come and go. Jean takes up his tools.
Jean. 'Tis a fine blade, this one. Do you remember?
I sold its fellow when we were in France
To buy you a ring.
Dorette. I had forgotten.
Jean. Turn
Your face this way. Look towards me, not the door.
What see you? There is only sun outside,
Harsh elder drops, ripe fields and ripening hours,
Soft birth of wings among the woven shadows,
And a Southward-crying thrush. Do you remember?
They built and sang what time we built this house.
I left the elder thicket for their sake,
Who also built for love.
Dorette. Shagonas . . . where?
Jean. What do you say? Are you sick? You speak so low.
Dorette. O, sick of heart! Jean, Jean, I cannot bear it.
Jean. If you move more, I will bind you to the chair
As the Indians bind a prisoner to the stake
Lest they miss one shuddering nerve, one eyelids droop
Before the lifting fires, . . . Your pardon, wife.
Was I so fierce? There's fire in me to-day
Would close a burning grip on the whole earth
And break it into ash . . . Your face, your face.
That's beautiful. Why, almost here's the look
I crave to lend Our Lady, yet too quick
With life and dread. Will you not mend your eyes
That yet lay hold on Love, and teach your lips
Too eager for that cup, and school your heart
That yet strains after him the way he went
That he returns no more? O, two rode home,
'Two rode home by the foam and the sand
Between the night and the day,
But one has stayed in Holy Land,
One always stays, one always stays behind
Where the heart made Holy Land. This king of song
Was worshipful, just, and mighty, His great place
Knew him no more. He cast it all away,
The pity of it!so he might serve till death
God's Mother. But she did not wear your face.
Dorette. This heat. . . I am dying.
Jean. What is it you say?
If I should gash this sacred brow I smoothe
Would you break blood? If I should pierce your heart
Would she of the sevenfold sorrows leap and cry?
I cannot part you. O the grief of it,
That Mary should sit there with you, and you
Climb heaven with her. I am grown old with grief
In a short hour. To work, to work,your face.
Dorette. Call, call Shagonas.
Jean. Has he the art to heal you?
What do you fear? I would not have you fear.
I would have you like poor Mary here, who passed
Beyond it, of a Friday.
Dorette. O my heart.
Jean. Broken like mine? And so you had a heart,
As well as those round limbs, those prosperous lips,
The bloom of bosom and hair? 0, he hath stayed,
O, he hath stayed to watch her face
And make his prayer thereto,
And to lay down for her soul's grace
His life beneath her shoe,
Why, I have changed the song. What's come to it?
An ill song for the Mother o' God to hear.
Well, well, your pardon. Keep your face to me.
Dorette. Pity, O Saviour.
Jean. I am saving you,
Your soul alive, a brand in a great burning
Here in my breast. I saw where you will sit
Years in the little forest-scented church,
And lives like peaceful waves will break in foam
Of praise before you. Then I turned me home.
I sawI sawO, God, the chisel slipt
And I have scarred you! I will heal the wound,
Thus, thus. Be still. I am saving you. Now, Shagonas!
Jean has crossed the room, caught her to her feet, and stands holding her and her face to the door. Suddenly the note of a drawn bowstring is heard outside, something flashes past, there is a silence. Then among the shaken shadows of elder leaves on the door is seen for one moment the shadow of a man, erect, with tossed arms, and pierced through with a long arrow. Comes the sound of a fall, or broken branches. Then again silence, and the shadows of the leaves are still. Jean seats Dorette again in the chair, where she remains quite motionless; he returns to the Pieta and takes his tools.
Jean. Your face again. Why, now you are fulfilled.
You will make my Mary perfect yet, your eyes
Now, now the barren houses of despair,
Of the passion that is none, of dread that feels
No dread for ever, of love that has no love,
Of death in all but death. O beautiful,
Stretched, stamped and imaged in the mask of death,
The crown of such sweet life! Your looks, your ways,
Your touches, your slow smiles, your delicate mirth,
All leading up to this! And his, the high
Clear laughter on the threshold of renown,
Stilled! I could almost weep for him and you,
Weep all my wrong away. My queen, my rose
Rent with strange swords, my woman of light worth,
Behold, you have brought forth death.
Shagonas enters, carrying De Lotbiniere's sword, which, obeying a gesture of Jean's, he lays across the knees of Dorette. She looks down upon it as though blind.
Jean. Your only fruit
Destruction and the severing steel, the heat
Of tears unshed, the ache of day and day
Monotonous in want, inevitable,
The dry-rot of the soul. Have you no words?
Dorette. He saidhe said there were flowers in the forest,
White flowers by a blue pool, Our Lady's colours.
May I go look for them? All white, he said,
White as the Virgin's hands. But you have made her
Out of red wood with a light of fire upon it.
Perhaps the flowers turned red.
Shagonas. There is no fear
In the forest shadows now for the fair lady.
Jean. Fear's slain with that it fed on. To your wilds,
You wolf that watched the flock. I will wait here with her,
Stay, hearing a certain crying from the ground,
The faint innumerable mouthing leaves,
The clamour of the grass, the expectant thunder
Of a berry's fall. Go you, go you. But first
Turn me her head a little to the shoulder
So the light takes the cheek, raise the calm hand
Clasping the sword, set the door wide, and go.
Now, now my Virgin's perfect. Quick, my tools!
O Mater Dolorosa! O Dorette!
All is silent save for the tinkle of a little church bell ringing for vespers, and a faint sound of chanting.
Jean. Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae,
Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.
Will the light hold until they come for me?
(Curtain)
